


serendipity

by jjprise



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 09:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7527925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjprise/pseuds/jjprise





	serendipity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kthayyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kthayyy/gifts).



Kathy is tired.

It's definitely not like her to travel by herself all alone halfway across the world, and spend one of the most festive days of the season holding back tears in the middle of the biggest toy store. But maybe she's always known to make bad decisions, which could have been one of the reasons why Jaebum had left her.

 _Could you do so much as shut up about him for even a second?_ , she thinks to herself. But even before she moves on to the next thought lingering in her head--which was about him anyway--she thinks that she might not be able to. Just as she's about to reach for a stuffed toy on a rack, someone bumps into her right shoulder forcefully, causing her pouch to fall to the floor and its contents to spill before she could even stop it. Her spare change saved for cab rides, her key to the crappy room in the inn several blocks away... and the dreaded Polaroid picture she took with Jaebum during her school fair that somewhat started it all.

"Bitch!" she manages to scream, although the sound is drowned out by the noise of every other last-minute Christmas shopper. She feels a tear trickle down her cheek, and mutters a curse at herself for being so emotionally vulnerable, especially when it comes to Jaebum. You see, Kathy has always rooted for the whole soulmates thing: her mom raised her on stories of how people were bound to each other with red strings of fate and matching markings on skin. Long after she grew out of believing in these concepts, the very idea of having a person to call her own enchanted her to no end, and maybe that was why the minute Jaebum showed the slightest interest in her, she had mistaken him for The One.

She'd always had the biggest crush on him when they were younger, and though she tried to keep it lowkey most times for the fear of attracting his attention and eventually scaring him away, her friends' constant teasing did not help. How could she not, though? He had the vocals of a god, danced like his life depended on it and lost his eyes whenever he smiled, which was very often. One would have to be daft to not like him, at the very least.

Which is why it stunned her beyond belief when he had asked her out on a date.

_She deadass presumed he had no clue whatsoever of who she was before that day even went down, so when he approached her during lunch at her usual spot, which provided her a great view of him taking his tray of macaroni and cheese and walking to his table, Kathy was shook. And that's putting it lightly._

_"Hey there, girlie." Jaebum had said, taking the chair beside her like it was the normal thing in the world and sitting on it. He was looking up at her with his eyes glinting and his smile almost as wide as a crescent moon. Kathy, of course, being her usual awkward self, resembled a deer in the headlights that time but the rational part of her brain wasn't working enough to change her facial expression._

_"Hey, uhm... hello?" he tried again, waving his hand in front of her face repeatedly. Much to Kathy's surprise, she found herself cocking her head to the side, where her group of taunting friends were located. Of course, they were chuckling in an absurdly loud fashion, like someone was tickling them from head to toe, and she would have punched the living daylights out of them if only she wasn't totally frozen._

_Jaebum scratched the back of his neck, like he was so close from giving up on the whole situation. "Listen. My friends and I are having a party on Friday. Pretty cool stuff: a lot of music and people and maybe even a little alcohol, you know what I'm saying? So, are you down?"_

_More silence came from her corner, and yeah it was a bit a humiliating to be as still as a statue in front of someone like Im Jaebum, for fuck's sake. But, could we blame her? Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined him even breathing within a ten-foot radius of her, and now he was asking her out. To a party._

_"Uh, I'll take that as a yes, I guess. Here's my number in case you want to hit me up before the party." He casually slides a slip of paper with his digits scrawled in a hurried fashion, and bids her goodbye._

That was basically the start of everything. Well, for her, at least. The minute they were seen together at the party, they had been touted as one of the couples to watch out for in school, even though none of them had formally confirmed it. It was a period of casual dating, with Kathy being in charge of most of the emotional investment to the point wherein she ended up sacrificing important commitments and wasting a huge chunk of her life savings to give it away to Jaebum.

Well, that was until he confronted her over a week ago (fuck, her life ended over a week ago?) telling her that he just wasn't cut out for being with her, topped off with that "you deserve better than me" bullcrap that we all hear on TV. 

And since this break-up has taken over her life, thrown it out of the window with the rest of her, if she's being honest, she completely lost track of everything else. Eating has become a chore for her, socializing has turned into a thing of the past and she forgot even her own little sister's birthday. Who was actually not so little anymore, seeing as she was turning thirteen, something that had slipped her mind as well.

"Hey, Kathy!" She could hear the peppy tone in her voice right in her ears, as if she was talking at that very moment when she was just remembering a conversation from about a week before. "I miss you so much, when are you coming back home?"

Kathy actually had no plans of coming back any time soon, but she didn't know if she was willing to disclose such information. She just wanted to stay away from everyone and everything for the time being, seeming as even the littlest remnants of Malaysia reminded her of Jaebum, the memories she could never escape even if she tried. 

"Hopefully, as soon as possible," was the vague response she gave away, and unfortunately for her, her time was running out since Christmas was fast approaching and her sister was growing more and more impatient. Her mom booked her a flight back to Malaysia without her knowing, and before she could even get her shit together, she was due to fly to hell tomorrow.

**

Not far away from her, pushing a shopping cart of his own, Sehun is also tired.

He's had five concerts spanning five locations in the United States that just have to be so inconveniently far from each other, a flight back to Seoul to catch tomorrow morning, and add to that, consecutive practice days, close to zero sight-seeing opportunities and too many fans screaming "oppa!" in his ear even if they looked old enough to be his mother. So, yeah, simply "tired" would be a terrible understatement.

But, instead of catching up on some sleep in his hotel room like what he had initially promised himself to, he's out fishing for possible Christmas presents for his nieces. It's probably the most stupid thing he's ever done to go shopping on a day so close to the biggest holiday of the year, in a place where he could easily be spotted, but he thinks all of it can be remedied with a beanie, a mask and adrenaline in case he needs to run from crazed fans.

He feels his phone buzz in his pocket again, and ignores it like he's been doing for the past few times. It's not that Sehun doesn't find the gesture from Junmyeon thoughtful, especially because he knows he's just looking out for him since it's the first time a member of the group has refused to fly with the rest of them due to exhaustion. But, it's not like he hadn't assured him that he'd be fine and that he'd take some time off as promised, both of which are false. And sometimes, he just gets tired of him too. 

There are good days: where practice feels somewhat cathartic to him, where he's easily capable of translating his emotions into fluid movements, where there's ssamgyeopsal and chatter filling the room right after and a warm, fuzzy feeling in his stomach, seeing all nine of them laugh like they don't know what a problem looks like.

Then, there are days like this, which have been going on and off for a while now. Sometimes, he tries to console himself with the thought that he gets to do what he loves and make a shit ton of money in the process but not even that could make him forget that he's never felt so much as a prisoner in his entire life. Practice goes on for excruciatingly long hours, especially now that there's a possibility of a comeback after the unprecedented success of their last one, but he's still doomed to the bare minimum amount of lines in every single song, like him opening his mouth would start the plague.

"Sometimes, the sky on the ceiling reminds me of the freedom I'll never have while I'm still here," he told Chanyeol once after running through the routine for far too many times at such an ungodly hour in the morning. It only resulted into a punch on his right arm, and a reproachful warning from his friend but he had meant it. Every single word of it, and maybe that's what brought him to a toy store.   
Maybe he just wants to be reminded of a time when he was his little self, enchanted by things as minuscule as toy trucks, where he was free to move around and be his own person without living in fear of being trampled on for doing so.

A life-sized stuffed toy in the corner catches his eye: a smiling bear with pink ribbons at each side of her head and a tulle skirt that resembles that of Seunghee. He instinctively reaches out for it, making a mental note to tell his niece about it the minute he gets back to his hotel room, and is ready to put it into his cart when he sees a girl hanging on to the other arm.

You know how cliche descriptions get in stories when it comes to the moment the guy meets the girl. Sehun absolutely hates that: he's been in love in the past, for sure, but he's not a big believer in the world slowing to a stop the minute he sees the one he's keen on spending the rest of his life with. Sparks don't fly, butterflies don't make a habitat out of his stomach. Until now, he guesses.

She's basically the most beautiful thing he's ever seen in a really long while. He tries to trace back the last thing that struck his fancy, and comes to a conclusion that it was only ever a blue sky he had seen when he was spending some down time on the rooftop of the Namsan Tower. She held the beauty of every single blue sky he was going to see for the rest of his life, combined.

And to think her cheeks are stained with tears, her eyes puffy and her nose so red it resembles a baby tomato stuck to her face. She seems like she's had a bad couple of days behind her, Sehun decides to presume, and when she speaks, he can confirm it by the crack in her voice. "Uhm, I'm sorry," she shyly replies, letting go of the toy and making her way to another aisle.

"Wait!" Sehun says before he could even stop himself, grabbing a hold of her shirtsleeve. An expression of shock spreads across her face, and he knows he may have done something wrong so he lets go almost immediately. "You can have it. You look like you could use it."

"Oh my God, no thank you. Really, it's fine. I can always look for another."

He clicks his tongue in frustration. "No way, this definitely belongs to you. I wouldn't want to be the one who deprives you of this beautiful little stuffed bear. Go on, take it."

"You're way too kind, but please. You could use it yourself, it's the Christmas season. You might never get to see this again," she mutters, and it's almost inaudible but it's only because she's crying for no apparent reason and Kathy hates many things, really, but causing a scene in public lands itself at least in the top three.

"Whoa there, hey, hey, don't cry," Sehun says, jumbling up his words in an attempt to comfort her. "If it actually means that much to you, then it's totally fine, don't mind me. I'm just gonna leave this on the shelf, and wait for you to take it." He gives her a reassuring pat on the back and waits for her to reach for the toy, but she moves a bit too slowly that she's bested by a middle aged woman who looks stressed as fuck, looking like she's desperate enough to put the whole store in her bag.

"Wait!" they both say at the exact same time, which makes her turn to them with a sense of urgency. "Why are you taking that toy?" Sehun asks, which actually seems quite stupid in retrospect as the middle aged woman he addressed to suddenly has her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised.

"Good sir, we are in the middle of the busiest season of the year. I have four girls begging me for the same doll, and you're asking me what I'm doing with this toy in my hand?" she asks him, wide-eyed and obviously impatient. Shoppers start giving them unusual looks, the kind that Kathy has wanted to avoid all her life. It gives her this uncomfortable feeling, quite similar to someone literally breathing down her neck.

Thankfully, Sehun's quick to improvise. "Well, you see, I was going to give it to my girlfriend," he says, nodding in her direction.

Kathy feels a hot, prickling sensation spread across her face and neck, and she's desperately trying to cover all the regions of her face at this point. "She's been really sad these past couple of days, and I remember this one time... when we were kids! Yeah, she told me that her favorite thing in the world, the only thing that could make her feel better no matter what was a golden stuffed bear. And, here it is."

The woman turns soft for a minute, her eyes a bit teary at the corners, before she gives him a firm nod and races off to the next few aisles. Sehun, looking triumphant as ever, hands over the stuffed toy to Kathy with a smile that turns his eyes into little crescent moons. "Here you go, the fruit of my labor. And, the name's Oh Sehun, by the way."

"Thank you, uhm, Oh Sehun. It's Kathy," she responds shyly, loading the bear onto her cart. "But, why did you have to do that for me? I mean, I could pay you if you want, really. It's a big deal."

"Oh please Kathy, stop acting like I just eradicated world hunger or something. I just helped you out because I wanted to." He waves her away as she reaches for her wallet, only to come across three one-dollar bills: not even close to being enough to buy her that stuffed toy. It's a bit humiliating to have had somebody else witness just how in need she was, and despite her being a constant target of humiliation, she's never looked so desperate in her life.

Sehun purses his lips and speaks after a few moments of thinking. "Okay, listen. I'm paying for that toy under one condition. Like, it's quite simple, you don't really have to do much. You just have to let me cheer you up."

The information takes a while to process and when it does, she's literally so overwhelmed by everything and her words end up becoming a plea, begging him not to do anything for her anymore because she's just so unworthy and incapable of accepting acts of kindness. But, Sehun's persistent and tells her, "See that coffee shop across the street? They serve the best coffee, and it's only two dollars. And their name fits us quite well, really."

Kathy looks up, momentarily confused. "What's the name anyway?"

"Serendipity. My favorite word. Means beautiful accident."

 

**

 

Kathy finds out over coffee that not only does it actually taste like shit, but the person who actually bought it for her is actually an international superstar, and she almost spits it out. She's tempted to, really, because as previously mentioned, the bitter sting of coffee does nothing but disgust her, but she's wearing the only cashmere sweater she's packed for the trip and she doesn't want to stain it. But seriously speaking, she only thought these things happened in the crappy fanfiction her friends indulged in: never to a little, vulnerable bean like her. 

"You've literally got to be kidding me right now," she says, setting her cup back down on the table. "A korean boyband? Called EXO? What kind of group is named THAT, for starters? That's got to be the most stupid one on the planet so far."

Sehun winces. "Well, I'm not to blame for that. You could forward any of your concerns to Mr. Lee Soo Man, the owner of SM Entertainment." He mentally gives himself a pat on the shoulder for coming up with a seemingly substantial comeback, but takes it away when he finds out she still hasn't bought it.

"Now, you're even making up a company name!" she retorts, pointing an accusatory finger at him.

"I'm not! I swear to God!" But, he's said this more than his fingers and toes could count in the past half hour alone, to no avail. So, he resorts to pulling out his phone and trying to look for the most decent photo of all nine of them in his Camera Roll.

Sehun finds out that's good enough: it's from their first win for Monster, and everything is absolutely perfect, even if Baekhyun decided to turn around at the last second to piss them off. It was a relatively great time for him, the rare moment he was actually proud to call himself an EXO member. He then reaches his phone out for her to see.

"See that dashing guy in the middle? That's me!" he tells her like he's giving live commentary of a football game. "To my left are Junmyeon, Minseok, Kyungsoo and Jongin and to my right are Yixing, Chanyeol, Jongdae... and well, you can't really see his face, but that's Baekhyun."

Kathy stares at it intently for a good few seconds, trying to process all this new information, and he's just trying to rack his brain for more possible explanations when it seems clear that she's actually coming to terms with everything. Though that doesn't stop the firing away of question after question after question. It's a normal thing for him anyway, except usual interviews with the hyungs are with snobbish members of the press, each question coming out of their mouths already coming with a pre-determined response written by the management.

"So, if you're actually a boyband member, which you appear to be because God if you're scamming me I am going to kill you, literally tear you apart with my bare hands I swear to-"

"Okay, I get it. I promise I'm not bluffing, Jesus Christ." He even holds out his pinky to show his sincerity, but she blatantly ignores it to continue with her interrogation.

"Why are you here in New York, and not in Korea with your mates? Aren't you supposed to be having concerts or making songs? I didn't know you guys had the luxury of time to be seen on the other side of the world these days." 

He rubs his palms together and chuckles half-heartedly. "Well, that's the thing. I've been here for a while with the rest of them, touring around the States. I was actually supposed to leave yesterday with the rest of them, but... I just got tired of it, s'all."

"Tired? Of what? How could you possibly get tired of such a fabulous life? You probably get fed breakfast in bed on the daily, and chased by hundreds of adoring fans everywhere you go. Maybe you're even one of those who spend hours locked up in the studio, getting to do what you love and actually get away with it because it's your job. Imagine how much money you make by the hour, or even by the minute. You could literally inhale and be 72 cents richer, for all we know."

Kathy tends to do this a lot: go off on tangents about certain things due to her wild imagination. It's been a habit since she was a child, and the number of times she's been told off by her mom for talking too much when no one even gives a shit is too big it's become an abstract concept. But even so, Sehun's stuck staring at her, blabbering on, scrunching her nose in fury at times, like she has no care in the world.

She takes notice of this not long after, and shuts up so quickly it could pass off as a reflex. "I'm sorry, I talk too much and it's a tad bit annoying... actually, REALLY annoying. My mom hates me for it, but I can't help it sometimes," she explains, downing her second cup in the process.

Sehun waves it away like it's nothing, and for a minute, Kathy feels a heavy load lifted off her chest. "It's fine, I assure you. Speak your mind all you want, it's actually really endearing." Of course, being her usual self, her face turns fifty shades of red all at once for the nth time since they've met. Which is actually quite embarrassing, because she's not allowed to let a stranger have such an effect on her.

"You? Why are you here?" he asks, sipping through his third cup of coffee. It's empty again, and he raises his shoulders up and down repeatedly like he feels the jitters going through his body, the caffeine rushing through his bones.

"Hey, now don't push your luck." Kathy says firmly. "It's my turn to interrogate this time."

"Oh, so you're actually planning on seeing me again?" Sehun replies with the cheekiest smile on his face, and Kathy swears she either wants to rip him apart with her bare hands or envelope him in a cuddle because god fucking damnit how is someone that cute without even trying!

She pretends to think about it for a while. "Well, I guess I should do something to avenge myself for having to drink this shitty coffee, eh?"

**

Sehun has come to the conclusion that being EXO's best dancer won't do him shit on the ice, for he has managed to bruise his knee at least thrice within half an hour.

"Is this your idea of fun? How does falling down on cold, hard ice strike you as fun?" he shouts at Kathy, who's all the way on the other side, twirling like an absolute pro with the biggest smile on her face. 

"Well, who on earth told you you had to fall?" she teases, laughing without the least bit of restraint. It's music to his ears, if he's being honest, one of the many good things that comes out of going to an ice rink so late at night with the most beautiful stranger he's ever met. Sehun tries to keep in mind the basic rules she had told him earlier: just slide one foot in front of the other, and repeat the process until you've moved an inch. Unfortunately, all he's managed to do is break a few inches of the ice and unleash some water, making everything a tad bit more slippery.

"Are you telling me you've never fallen your entire life?" he retaliates, and he sort of considers the option of just lying down and sliding whilst flat on his back to make his way around the rink, until Kathy shouts, "Well, I have! For the wrong person actually!"

She slides over to him once she notices he's gone silent, and suggests that they lie down flat on the ice. For a minute, Sehun's puzzled as to what she's doing: squinting up at the sky and seemingly connecting the stars with her fingers until she's got it. "He used to call me Cass, even if my name was Kathy. And I'd always wondered for the longest time why he did. He never told anybody for the longest time, until he announced it to me on one of the very rare Good Days.

"Cass was short for Cassiopeia, basically that constellation that looks like a broken letter W. Can you see it?" she asks, with Sehun nodding in response. "Apparently, Cassiopeia was a vain queen, but a queen nevertheless, who was known for her unrivaled beauty. The rest of her story is tragic, what with her being sentenced to hang up in the sky upside down all her life, but the most important thing to me then was that he said I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. I used to go stargazing every night, trying to spot Cassiopeia and I just smiled to myself like an idiot because that was me to him, you know.

"Well, until I found out that I was all just part of a bet. I mean, I honestly don't know why I thought the most popular guy in school could actually fall in love with me and didn't think it was a bet in the first place, but I did. I was so stupid, and I found out two days after we broke up when his fucking girlfriend confronted me in the hallway. Telling me that this was all some part of a twisted Truth or Dare game, and God, that moment, I either wanted to die or kill everyone else. And for some reason, in an attempt to run away from everything like a coward, I ended up here. The end."

Sehun's heart feels like it's about to burst, and not even in a good way at all. It's like all the energy in his body is making its way to his fist, ready to punch the living daylights out of the guy who broke her so ruthlessly. How on Earth could somebody even dare to hurt someone so fragile, so needed to be protected? "

**

As Sehun walks with Kathy during what could possibly their last few moments together, he comes to the conclusion that this is the happiest he has been in a while. And so, he says it.

Much to his surprise, instead of cowering away and avoiding his compliment like it was the plague, Kathy brings herself to smile so wide that it makes the butterflies arise in his stomach. "It was for me too, you know. Too bad tomorrow's gonna be a bad day all over again."

"You know it doesn't have to be," he replies ever so casually, tucking his hands in his pockets. "You could always choose to stay, just saying."

She looks up at him only to roll her eyes a full three hundred and sixty degrees. "You know that's not possible when we both have flights tomorrow to different parts of the world, but I appreciate the effort."

"That's it? You're not even the least bit freaking out that we're quite possibly never going to see each other again?" Because I'm going crazy trying to think of ways to see you again without being caught or followed everywhere by the press and discovered by my agency, he thinks. Only he doesn't say that.

Kathy shrugs. "Well, maybe it's because I'm a big believer in destiny? Like, if it's meant to be, it will be, you know? Oh my God, I'd hate to sound so fake deep, but it's true. It's like everything that you want has a string that leads to you and even if the world turns itself upside down, it'll always find its way to you so no need to worry."

Suddenly, this idea sparks in her head and it's totally stupid she almost curses herself for even thinking it up in the first place. But, at the same time, it's just way too brilliant, the exact thing that people like her would even think of in the first place. "Give me five dollars!" she says almost too urgently.

"Whoa there, I thought we already got past the stage where I thought you were a scammer," Sehun bluffs, holding his hands up as if to surrender.

"Oh Sehun, if you don't give me five dollars now, I'm going to dropkick you." This causes him to fish out a bill from his pocket almost immediately. "Next, I'm going to need you to put your name and number here and if you say anything at all, I'm going to do it right now, in front of everyone else."

He gets a pen from the depths of his bag, and mutters incoherently while writing down his name both in English and hangul, with all twelve digits of his number in Seoul right beside it. Well, sure, it would have to take until the next comeback for the agency to give him his phone back but nobody has to know. It's the following instruction that takes him a bit off course.

"Now, let it fly into the wind."

"You're going to make me waste perfectly good money with my number on it? What if a fan sees it and ends up calling me? What if I end up exposing myself and violating our company's rules? If I become homeless, without a career in other twelve months, please do know that it is entirely your fau-"

"I'm literally going to kick your ass right now if you don't let go of that bill."

And with that, another order was followed because of a threat. But before Sehun could call her out for being so harsh, she had already ran over to a stall a few steps away, where a half-asleep lady was selling used paperbacks in the dead of the night. He takes a closer look at what she's doing: signing her name and phone number in the first page of a beat-up first edition of The Catcher in the Rye.

"Right, I just said that if it's meant to be, then it will be? This is literally the perfect test." she says too enthusiastically, that Sehun doesn't bother stopping her. "If I ever come across that bill you threw in the air, or you get your hands on a copy of this book, then that's the sign, right?"

"That's so unfair!" he almost yells. "Too unfair! What if we never find those items? Or even if we do, what if we're old and crusty and way too unattractive to show our faces to each other?"

Kathy gives him a shrug in return and stows the book at the very bottom of the pile, and she's literally about to ask what the fuck they're going to do in New York City when it's almost totally pitch dark when Sehun grabs her by the wrist and sprints like he's being chased by a mugger. Kathy's too concerned at first that she actually looks if anyone's chasing them, whilst shouting, "Sehun, let go! What the hell!"

All the running leads them to the inside of The Plaza Hotel, something Kathy only ever used to watch in movies. As expected, it was everything she thought it to be: elegant, magnificent, fucking expensive. Even if this was the first place she thought of checking in when she made the decision to go to New York, she knew that even if she sold her house, she couldn't afford a night's stay. But, of course, with Sehun being the international superstar he was, it wasn't much of a surprise that he was staying here.

"Okay so I have a better idea that will produce instant results," he says, in between loud breaths (but of course, I wouldn't really know how to write that down). "We get into the elevator, and if we end up picking the same floor, there that's it. We're staying for at least one more day."

Her face scrunches up in confusion and before she could even begin to protest, he goes, "Because I've been happier in a span of a few hours with you, than I have been in the past five months training in Korea. And I really don't want to go back. I also really don't want you to go back. So the deal is if we pick the same floor, we're sorting out our shit. Together. Deal?"

"I like the way you think," Kathy tells him, stepping into one elevator and watching Sehun get onboard the one directly in front of her.

"See you on the flipside."

**

Kathy is stressed beyond belief, and she's not even sure if it's in a good way or the tightening in her chest actually means she's got herself some legitimate heart problems. Yesterday, she spent most of her day on the floor of her crappy rented apartment in Soho with nothing but a pint of Ben and Jerry's to keep her company. And now, she's playing against the cards of destiny with a dashing man made of everything good in this world. Like, believe it or not, Sehun's looks was not exactly what sealed the deal for her. 

Sure, it helped that he was devastatingly handsome, like God took the choicest parts of every human being and combined it into one while He was making him. But, he's the first person to care for her in a really long while. And believe her, she isn't into the concept of insta-love either and a part of her brain is still faintly considering whether or not she's been associating herself with a scammer this whole time. It's just that she's missed the feeling of someone giving a shit about her, someone who actually wants to know what she thinks, someone who'd go out of his way to make her feel comfortable.

So as she closes her eyes and prays her finger pads lead her to the floor he has his sights on, she hopes that she gets even one more day... and that floor #19 works in her favor.

** 

Sehun wants to stay. So bad, the feeling actually gnaws on his insides. And he doesn't want to wait for a fucking book to show up on his doorstep, because who knows when that's going to happen, right? Who knows what would have become of him, or Kathy, by then? He wants the feeling of familiarity she gives off, like they've known each other forever. He wants the reassurance that there is something good in this world that is constant, that there's actually a life outside the environment he's sentenced himself to for so long.

But, he wants floor #19 to come through for him more than anything most of all.

 

**

By floor #7, Kathy is somewhat convinced that this is all a trick the universe is playing on her.

Because so far, nothing good that has come into her life has given her the pleasure of staying for long. And she's starting to think that this is going to be one of them.

**

By floor #8, Sehun's elevator stops to let in a little boy and his dad, who's still clad in a suit and tie at fucking half past two in the morning and talking on the phone.

It takes forever for the door to close, even if in reality, it's only a couple of seconds, and Sehun's highkey shaking at this point because what if in that short span of time, he had already missed her? What if the minute he arrives is just seconds after she's walked away?

The aforementioned child interrupts his train of thought as he does the unthinkable and press every single button on the elevator like he's playing a game with himself. From that moment on, Sehun wants to pop his head off so bad and he almost (operative word: almost) grabs the businessman by the collar and shake him back to the present situation.

First, he starts with all even numbers, and eventually works his way from the first odd integer up to the 27th floor, the penthouse suite.

**

By floor #14, Sehun is positively losing his shit.

**

By floor #16, Kathy is wondering what the hell her mom is going to tell her when she announces over the phone that she's not coming home as planned.

**

By floor #19, both the little boy and his father have gotten off, leaving Sehun alone to bask in his anxiety.

Suddenly, the door opens.


End file.
